Belated Merry Christmas

The past month has been boring. I went to the pistol range and did mediocre, but pretty good for my first try.

Work has just been that...work. Not much to go tell. People come, people go. It's like baby sitting a 4 year-old.


What do you do when you work Christmas eve? Why, you right out the 12 days of Christmas in the Brig.

The 12 days of Christmas, in the brig:
12 guards a sleeping
11 cameras filming
10 inmates running
9 cells a slamming
8 alarms a blaring
7 forks missing
6 riot calls
5 Detainees
4 coded notes
3 hard cards
2 O.R.s
An a razor blade in an inmates tea.

Merry Christmas every one, from me and my mustache (Pictures later).

I worked on Thanksgiving.

It was the day before Thanksgiving, here, to all of you.

I hope all of yours was happy and all that good stuff.

Around the Island, the room, and the Ball

Sorry, my room was kind of a mess. It doesn't always look like that.

I have pictures of the Marine Corps Ball, I'll post them as soon as I get my new power cable.

Good Day!

The Marine Corps Ball is tonight. I'm going in my dress blues. With freshly sewn on Lance Corporal Chevrons.

Oorah 80 dollar pay raise.

¡Success!

After different websites and coming up with the same thing, I finally got a cable on it's way, I'll have in a week-ish.

Power cords for the WIN!

Dooms Day

My computer's power cable has been torn, I need a new one, so I may be off line and out of touch for a few days at a time.

I went to the apple store on line and found an adapter....for 80 bucks, but Apple does not send directly to an APO or FPO, directly. So, it looks like I am out of luck, unless they have an adapter at one of the other bases. Looks like I'll be off longer than I thought.

PFT tomorrow, wish me luck.

Iwo Jima

My sponsor, the Marine that kind of put Day and I in the swing of things. She got the opportunity to go to Iwo Jima. She got back sometime today, and during our motivating field day, she came up to me and asked for Day. Day's on duty, and she said she had something for me. So I followed her out side, and she had this big bag of sand. At this point I had no clue where she had been. So she starts pouring me this small bag of sand. I didn't really know what it was, but the sand is black. She then told me about what she had done, and told me about how it's sand from Iwo Jima.

So I have a small bag of sand from the beach that was the sight of one of the bloodiest battles in Marine history. Kind of a big thing. I'll be sending it home, I don't want anything to happen to it.

This Sunday, she invited Day and I to some festival at some castle on the island, it should be a good time. If we go, I'll take pictures.

Nothing interesting has been going on.

Our Master Gunnery Sergeant (The Brig Supervisor who has probably been in longer than I have been alive) Complemented me and a buddy to my Sergeant on how well we were doing things.

I'm not going to be home for thanks giving or Christmas, but I'm going to try to make it home for my friends Wedding. But I'm 22 days in the hole with leave right now... So it's unlikely, but I'll give it a shot.

We haven't done much, just setting up our room and making it more like home. We got a George Forman Grill and a Microwave, so now it's more like a college dorm. So things could be worse.

Nothing new going on, but while walking from the PX (store) today, saw something cool going on in the field near the brig.

Some Pictures (1 of 3):

Random Street

Me eating Tacorice

For some reason this didn't make any sense... Well, maybe.

Some house, we thought it looked cool.

THAT.....is a big tire. We didn't understand.

Some Pictures (2 of 3):

Day and some ocean.

Day and I just sitting on the beach.

Me and some Ocean

This guy looked worried for our safety, we still don't under stand why.

Some Pictures (3 of 3):

Day, eating Tacorice

Some Random Streets, it just looks different from America, this is the area around the Base

Day....... AND THE OCEAN

What's the difference between an 8 year old and an inmate?

The inmate isn't 8.

I bought a camera, so I'll try to get pictures up here soon.

Things have been alright here. I've been settling into my job nicely and just been trying not to get yelled at. I have today and tomorrow off before I work on Thursday (here), then I have 3 more days, so I really only work one day this week. Now that I have been there a day or two, the inmates are starting to know me, and i caught myself the other day going "Man, this is a really nice guy." But then it hit me HE'S IN PRISON. So, maybe outside of the murder charge, he's an alright guy. Anyways, now that I've been there inmates are doing their little test to see how much I can take, or seeing how strict I am. One detainee (in for horrible things, I don't understand why he's in general population) was doing his cleaning because he's in the DWF (Detainee work force) which means he cleans the brig, I don't care, it saves the trouble of me having to do it. But I was working the Central Wing Round House, the board that opens and locks doors for 3 pods, 2 of which are in use. He was dusting the bars obviously trying to look busy, and he was in front of the window looking into the Female Special Quarters (Hints at why he's there). So I pounded on the plexy glass window, behind a set of bars, and told him to move on. So he got all mad but moved on, The Next duty day, I was, again, working Central wing, and I had just gotten relieved for "down time". The Detainee was out cleaning at that time so I told the person that relieved me to keep an eye on him. So as I was walking out of the wing into the guard lounge, I hear "Why does he need to keep an eye out on me?" I calmly told him not to worry about it. But he kept on going on and on about how he doesn't deserve that kind of disrespect. I get back 2 hours later from my down time and find that he had been written up 4 times in the 2 hours I had been asleep. Impressive. Apparently he had been throwing a fit until taps and interfered with count at the end of the day. So he written up for:
Failure to use rank
Disrespect
Disobedience
and Interfering with count

This past Sunday, I was working West wing (same as Central only with more inmates) I had to do Inmate Trainee Work Evaluations, for everyone in that wing, minus Special Quarters. So I had to evaluate around 27 people. In the middle of all of this I look at the paper work and find that one prisoner's evaluation that I had to fill out. So I filled it out the best I could with the short time I had been there, and sent the papers to all of the pods (3 of them) to have the inmates sign. I get them all back and all of them are signed except that one detainee... My Sergeant wanted them by taps, so I spent about 2 hours trying to get this one guy to sign it. Now it looks bad on him because he didn't sign it. We'll see how the this plays out, because I have a feeling I'm not done hearing about him, yet. Kind of a let down ending, but this is the kind of people with whom I interact on a daily basis.

Side note:
A Pod is a series of 18 Cells, 1 cell for one person. Central wing has 3 prisoners in 2 pods, one's a female, so she's naturally in a pod of her own. Male SQ has 15 inmates, around 10 are Maximum security. Plus the remaining 25 inmates in the other three pods.

Now I know what my mom felt like after teaching pre-k for all of those years.

But all-in-all, the job isn't that bad, it's just getting used to not being able to call anyone when ever I want, because right now it's 3:41 am, here. I think you all would get kind of mad if I called right now.

I had sushi for the first time out side of America here about a week ago, and I have to say t was a big let down. If you want to try sushi, try it wherever you are, it all taste the same. In other words, raw fish taste the same no matter where you go.

So I was issued these awesome goggles

Settling in...

My Address:
PFC Wells, William, H.
MCB Brig/Hansen
Unit 35024
FPO AP 96373-5024

I start my first 24 hour shift tomorrow, after PT at 5:30am. Wish me luck!

It Starts....

After we did all of the checking in we could do today, we (my buddy Day and I) kind of got started on our jobs.

First they split us up and had us doing different things. I went into Special quarters. That's where all of the prisoners that have special needs (such as restrictions on their daily routine) go.When I got there it was shower call. There were 12 prisoners there, and all had to be taken to the shower individually. So the other marine would open the shower and radio the control to open the assigned door. The prisoners would stick their hands through the feed tray, and I would hand cuff them, they would step back and the door would open, and I would escort them to the shower.

Before that the prisoners and detainees were on their chow time, after chow they would show one knife, one fork, and one spoon, after that they would line up on a wall and frisk them. While frisking them, one of them laughed, and a guard quickly corrected this.

Then we learned how to buff a 25 foot hall way.....for around 4 hours.

First day, being a weekend!

So my buddy, Day, and I arrived in Okinawa around 12:00 in the A.M. We waited around to see if we could find a cab to bass, no one understood English until they saw our credit cards and cash, then all of a sudden, they were understanding everything we were saying. So we called the base, and someone came and picked us up.

We got to Base around 1:30am and got our sheets and checked in. Come to find out some of the permanent personnel have a wireless connection and we have been mooching off of them, since we've been here. We got up for formation around 8:00am and they made an announcement about a Sargent that had just checked in from the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot in San Diego. I didn't think anything of it. So we had to go talk to another Sargent about other stuff, and sure enough the Sargent that had checked in was the Drill Instructor from my Platoon back in boot camp. (The one that was switched into another platoon for being "malicious".

All in all, things are looking ok, I miss home a little, and so does Day. We'll start checking in on Monday, after we take a million hours of Japanese customs and what-not, classes.

More to come.